A Champion At Heart
by Bishop's Ring
Summary: Kalos is burning, Ash might be dying and Pikachu isn't Pikachu anymore. Team Rocket started the fight, Team Flare plans on finishing it and Professor Oak just wants to complete the newest version of the pokédex. Oh - and Ash still hasn't gotten his eighth badge. That's all on Pikachu, but you'll never hear him say it aloud.


**A/N: **Comments and feedback are always appreciated!

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**Chapter One: The Challenge of Life**

In retrospect, we should have kept in mind that Team Rocket was, at the end of the day, a worldwide criminal conglomerate, and should never have been underestimated or treating like a laughing matter. To our credit, our particular trio's incompetence just happened to have been so laughable that we'd grown sloppy — but the launching of a new scheme designed to increase the acquisition of poached pokémon, when coupled with new access to funding, had made them far more dangerous than we'd known them to be.

If I had known the costs of such carelessness, I would have never spared them a fully-powered blast off; if I ever saw them again, they'd suffer much worse.

Foolishly, we'd assumed that it was another standard kidnapping attempt. Ash and I had fallen back into autopilot, expecting some sort of mecha that seemed immune to my electric attacks on the surface but became the greatest conductor ever seen after a single iron tail.

What we hadn't anticipated was the horde of bastiodon, nor the arbok, nor the armoured scizor. Before, Rocket forces had always consisted of maybe two to three moderately-powerful, undisciplined pokémon — but this was something else entirely. They hadn't posed such a genuine threat since our early days in Unova, and back then, their momentum had petered out quickly enough; this felt different. _They_ felt different, more felon than farce.

Outnumbered and outclassed, we had fought valiantly. Vainly. Block had stopped me from escaping, wrap had stopped me from breathing and the cage had sealed my fate. By the time I'd recovered enough to consider escaping, any attempts proved futile, and my ticket to freedom turned to be the very people that stole that freedom from me.

I wouldn't have been opposed to the trio releasing me into the wilderness so that I could live out the rest of my days deep in Cerulean Cave. Instead, they insisted on shipping me right into the hands of Professor Oak, presumably hoping it would go some way to earning them their forgiveness. Had this been a more conventional reconciliation, I might have been more magnanimous about their paltry attempt at atonement.

As it stood, vitriol was easier to maintain.

The professor seemed to agree with my sentiment — he took one look at me and threatened to call the police, knuckles white with restraint. I'd be lying if I didn't say that the trio's terrified grovelling, voices reedy and incoherent, wasn't a gratifying sight.

In the end, it took the mere act of Oak reaching for his phone for them to scarper — they fled from his unflinching gaze like the cowards they were. Their departure, silent and stealing away into the night, felt terminal. Liberating, even.

Still, the sight of their retreating forms filled me with a childish rage that I unfairly turned on the professor. The circumstances weren't his fault, and pointing fingers didn't help, but it made me feel better, selfish as I knew I was being. Ever the paragon of self-control, he remained silent while I ranted inconsequentially, and when it was over, he took me into the lab and held me while I wept.

"Oh, Pikachu," he murmured, running his fingers through my fur. His arms, an unyielding shield around me, didn't feel as all-encompassing as they used to and I hated how vulnerable I felt. They trembled with the effort of maintaining composure — either that, or with the strain of bearing my new weight. I buried my nose into his chest and tried not to think about that.

Still, it was impossible to focus on anything else. This wasn't a minor blip in the system, something easily rectified by wise words and hugging it out. Ash and I had spent so long fighting Team Rocket that we'd lost sight of their intentions beyond capturing me for their boss; by the time I was reminded, I was in the thick of it, altered past recognition.

"It's okay. You're okay." I knew he was trying to help, but it did little to console me. I was utterly disoriented, trapped in a strange limbo from which I couldn't break free. Empty sympathy would do nothing for me now.

"Just breathe," Oak continued, still stroking my fur. I dug my claws into his coat and tried to concentrate on the steady pulse of his heart, held in anxiety's unwavering grip until, bit by bit, I began to feel a little bit more like myself. The professor never stopped speaking while he carried me to the healing pod — his words were empty assurances, but I had the sneaking suspicion that they were more for his benefit than my own and didn't think to interrupt him.

It was only once I was set in the pod and I was able to look him in the eye that I noticed that he was barely clinging to equanimity, as though he was suffering the same agonies as me. Strangely, that was more comforting than anything else, unsettling as it was to see the usually-unflappable professor so perturbed.

"Ash will be happy to see you," Oak said after a minute of silence, brightening a little. I didn't share his joy — my stomach plummeted with realisation. I hadn't seen Ash in so long that I'd almost given up on a reunion — and now, in this state, I wasn't even sure if I _wanted_ to see him. Wasn't sure if I wanted _him_ to see _me_. I wasn't the same pokémon I'd been when Team Rocket had taken me away from him. "I'll ring him now and—"

_"RAI!"_ I blurted, unable to stop myself. Mortified, I snapped my jaws shut and stared with pleading eyes at the professor. Whatever secret I'd been trying to conceal, open and blatant as it was, dissipated into thin air. No amount of denial could provide a cogent argument for my status as a pikachu.

"... chu," I finished lamely, slumping. I wasn't ready to face Ash just yet. The inevitability of such a rapprochement filled me with an impending sense of doom, as though the world was ending and I was powerless to do anything but watch it collapse around me.

"He needs to know, Pikachu," Oak said gently, hooking me up to a monitor that tracked my vitals, and I clung to that name. He regarded me with a sense of renewed ruth. "You haven't seen him— he's been inconsolable for the last two months."

_Two months?_ Had I really been gone for that long?

The Kalos league was surely upon us. Unless Ash had pursued his journey without me — a notion I struggled to comprehend — it was likely that he still only had seven gym badges. Without that coveted final symbol, entering the league was an impossible feat, and we had come too far to fall short at the final hurdle. It wasn't lost on me that this failing was entirely my fault.

If the professor noticed my spiralling, he didn't mention it. "It would be cruel of me to keep you to myself."

I gritted my teeth, silent. Oak sighed at my stubbornness. "What is it that you're afraid of? He loves you more than anything. In any form. In _every_ form."

I wasn't afraid of rejection — I had no doubt that Ash would love me irrespective of what had happened to me, but we had always been Ash-and-Pikachu. It wouldn't be Ash-and-Pikachu anymore. It'd be Ash-and-_not_-Pikachu. Ash and a name I wasn't quite ready to ascribe to myself and wasn't sure I ever would be.

It was an irrational terror, I knew, but it eclipsed everything else. Ash's embraces would feel smaller. My weight on his shoulder would be bigger — too big, I feared, though I was never one to question his strength. Despite being the one with the lightning, I often felt as though he was the powerful one.

I had committed myself to life by his side on two conditions: that the archaic use of poké balls was a thing of the past when it came to me; and that I would never be forced to evolve. With the second stipulation thrown to the wind, I no longer knew where I stood — with myself more than with Ash. His was a devotion I could never mistrust.

Oak fixed me with a soft, sympathetic gaze. "This will work out, Pikachu, I promise. Now sleep — let me heal you."

I wanted to protest, to argue my case further, but he slid the glass of the pod shut, a strange, hazy glow illuminated the glass, and keeping my eyes open became more effort than it was worth. I became suddenly, painfully aware of just how exhausted I was.

"Sleep," he repeated, and I was out like a light.


End file.
